Story 3: Let Voters of Alabama Decide Who They Want For Their Senator — Alabama Republican Senate Candidate, Roy Moore, Denies Accusations Made in Washington Post Attack Article vs. Democratic Senate Candidate, Doug Jones, Supporter for Pro Abortion Planned Parenthood and Women Should Have The Right To Choose Killing Their Babies in The Womb — Denies Civil Rights Protection of Life To Babies Before Birth — Videos

Story 4: Remembering The Veterans in Music — Lili Marleen — We’ll Meet Again — Sky Pilot — We Gotta Get Out Of This Place — Paint it Black – – War — Where Have All the Flowers Gone? — Blowing In The Wind –Videos

Story 1: President Trump’s Address to South Korea’s National Assembly — Great Speech — Americans and Koreans Loved It — Every Breath You Take — Videos —

Story 2: President Trump Tells It Like It Is — Does Not Blame China For Hugh Trade Deficits But Past Administrations — Videos —

Story 3: Republican Party Senate Bill Wants To Delay Tax Cuts To 2019 Instead of Cutting Spending Now — Need New Political Party Advocating Balanced Budgets, Broad Based Consumption Tax,and Term Limits — Voters Will Stay Home Election Day, November 6, 2018 If Congress Does Not Completely Repeal Obamacare and Enact Fundamental Reform of Tax System — Videos —

Story 1: Communist Chinese Connection To Trade — Nuclear Proliferation — and — Terrorism (TNT) — Peace or War — China Must Destroy North Korea Nuclear Weapons and Missiles or Face The Consequences of Overthrow of Communist Party — U.S.Complete Embargo on All Chinese Trade and Investment —
Story 2: President Trump Meets With Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and President Moon Jai-in As U.S. Navy Flexes Air Power — All Options Are On The Table — Video —

Story 3: Saudi Arab On The Brink of War With Lebanon Controlled By Iran-backed Lebanese Shi‘ite group Hezbollah — Saudi Arab Blames Iran For Yemen Missile Attack — Purge and Roundup of Royal Prince Continues — Videos —

Story 1: Atheist Security Guard Dressed In Black and Wearing Body Armor, Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, Entered The First Baptist Church and Shoot and Killed 26, Including 8 Members of A Single Family with Pregnant Mother, Victim Range in Age From 18 Months to 77 Years and Wounded 20, in The Texas Small Town of Sutherland Springs, Population 400, A Nearby Neighbor, Stephen Willeford, 55, Shot Killer With His Rifle,Three Times, Twice in The Neck and Once in The Side, Killer Died of Wounds, After Brief High Speed Car Chase — The Times They Are A Changin — Blowing In The Wind — Videos

Story 1: Democrats (Liberal, Progressive & Socialist Wing) and Republicans (Liberal & Progressive Wing) of The Two Party Tyranny Are All Marxist Now — Big Government Bubble Tax Surcharge of 6% Increases Rate From 39.6% to 45.6% — Class Warfare — Eat The Rich — Videos — Part 2 of 2 —

Story 2: Republican Tax Cut Will Not Make America Great Again — Missing Is Real Government Spending Cuts That Results in A Balanced Budget By 2020 or 2024 — Spending Addiction Disorder (SAD) or Government Spending Obesity — Alive and Well — Videos —

Story 3: A Broad Based Consumption Tax Replacing The Current U.S. Income Tax System Along The Lines of The FairTax or Fair Tax Less With Generous Monthly Tax Prebates and Limiting Federal Government Expenditures to 90% of Taxes Collected Will Make America Great Again — Videos

Part 1 of 2 — Story 2: No Tax Reform By Changing From Income Tax System to Broad Based Consumption Tax — The FairTax or Fair Tax Less — No Middle Class Tax Relief From Payroll Taxes — No Real Cuts in Federal Spending As Budget Deficits Rise with Rising National Debt and Unfunded Liabilities — Spending Addiction Disorder — Government Obesity — Crash Diet of Balanced Budgets Required — Videos

Story 1: Update of Radical Islamic Terrorist Jihadist Attack in New York City — President Trump “Send Him To Gitmo” as Enemy Combatant and Get Rid of Chain Migration and Diversity Lottery Immigration Program and Replace With Merit Based System of Immigration — Videos — Breaking —

Story 1: American Collectivism (Resistance Is Futile) Vs. American Individualism (I Have Not Yet Begun To Fight!) — Federal Income, Capital Gains, Payroll,Estate And Gift Taxes, Budget Deficits, National Debt, Unfunded Liabilities, Democratic And Republican Parties, Two Party Tyranny Of The Warfare And Welfare State And American Empire Are The Past — The Future Is Fair Tax Less, Surplus Budgets, No Debts, No Unfunded Liabilities, And American Independence Party With A Peace And Prosperity Economy, Representative Constitutional American Republic Are The Future — Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way — Those Without Power Cannot Defend Freedom — Videos

The Breaking and Developing Story 1: Category 4 Hurricane Irma Over 500 Miles Wide Bigger Than Texas with 150 MPH Sustained Winds Slows Down Turns Toward West and Tracks Directly Over All of South Florida — Evacuate Now — Hurricane Irma Will Hit Landfall Sunday Morning With Storm Surge Up To 12 Feet and Rain Fall 10-18 Inches — Over Florida For 24 Hours — All Day Sunday — Mass Mandatory Evacuation For South Florida — Videos

The Breaking and Developing Story 1: Category 4 Hurricane Irma Over 500 Miles Wide Bigger Than Texas with 150 MPH Sustained Winds Slows Down Turns Toward West and Tracks Directly Over All of South Florida — Evacuate Now — Hurricane Irma Will Hit Landfall Sunday Morning With Storm Surge Up To 12 Feet and Rain Fall 10-18 Inches — Over Florida For 24 Hours — All Day Sunday — Mass Mandatory Evacuation For South Florida — Videos

The Breaking and Developing Story 1: Mandatory Evacuation Ordered For South Florida — Floridians Flee Monster “Nuclear” Hurricane Irma With Wind Speeds Exceeding 185 MPH That Could Hit Either Coast and Miami/Dade County By Saturday — High Rise Buildings With Glass Windows Near Construction Cranes A Major Concern — Gas Shortage A Serious Major Problem For Those Evacuating — Get Out If You Can Now! — When Will Irma Turn North? — Videos —

Story 2: Perspective Please — Over 1200 Killed by Flood in South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan) vs. Over 60 in Texas By Raining Weather Not Climate Change — Worst Flooding in Decades — Videos

Story 1: President Trump Strikes His True Colors Cuts Deal With Democrats — Just Another Big Government Spending Manhattan Liberal Democrat — American “Big Apple” Pie — The Day The Music Died — Videos —

Story 2: The Day The Republican Party and/or President Trump Gives Citizenship To Illegal Alien Dreamers will Be The Day Republican Party Commits Political Suicide and Gives Birth to the American Independence Party — Trump The Flip Flopper –The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down — Helpless — I Shall Be Released — Forever Young — Videos

Story 1: Attorney General Sessions Announced The Rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) But Gives Congress Six Months To Enact Law — Deport and Remove All 30-60 Million Estimated Illegal Aliens In The United States — Enforce U.S. Immigration Laws — No Citizenship For Illegal Aliens — Videos —

Story 2: Kim’s Bada Boom — Hydrogen Bomb Test — China Enabled North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Weapon Programs — China Should Dismantle North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Programs — Otherwise on 1 January 2019 U.S. Government Should Impose A Total U.S. Embargo On All Chinese Imports To U.S. and Ban All Exports From U.S. To China Until North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons and Missile Weapon Programs Are Completely Dismantled — Videos —

Story 3: Preparing For Hurricane Irma — Category 5 Destroyer and Killer Hurricane With Sustained Winds Over 180 Miles Per Hour and Wind Gusts Exceeding 200 Miles Per Hour — Will It Hit Florida? — Videos

Part 2 of 2, Story 1: President Trump’s Tax Speech — Very Light On Specifics — Let Congress Fill in The Details — Formula For Failure — Tax Rate Cuts Are Not Fundamental Tax Reform — A Broad Based Consumption Tax Such as The FairTax or Fair Tax Less Not Even Mentioned — What Good Is Dreaming It If You don’t actually do it! — Videos —

Part 1 of 2, Story 1: President Trump’s Tax Speech — Very Light On Specifics — Let Congress Fill in The Details — Formula For Failure — Tax Rate Cuts Are Not Fundamental Tax Reform — A Broad Based Consumption Tax Such as The FairTax or Fair Tax Less Not Even Mentioned — What Good Is Dreaming It If You don’t actually do it! — Videos —

Story 2: Revised Second Estimate of Real GDP Growth in Second Quarter of 2017 Is 3 Percent — Videos

Story 2: Old Left, New Left, Far Left — Lying Lunatic Left Losers and Big Lie Media Use Same Saul Alinsky Tactics — Label Opponents As Crazy, Mad, or Mentally Ill or To Get Elected — Then Start Another War — Videos

Story 1: No Sale President Trump — Stop Watching and Being Spooked By 24 — Bring All The Troops Home Now! — Stop Wasting Time, Money and Lives Being Policemen of The World and Foreign Nation Building — Yes To American Constitutional Republic — No To American Unconstitutional Empire — All Empires Decline and Fall — End The Warfare and Welfare State and Renew The Peace and Prosperity Economy With A Free Enterprise Market Capitalist System — Follow The Money: National Interest in Afghanistan Is Drugs and Minerals — The Gambler — Reality Television Presidency or 24/7 Trump — Videos

Story 3: The Democrat Party of Slavery, Segregation, Klu Klux Klan, and White Supremacy Rewrites History By Tearing Down Confederate Soldier Statues That They Put Up — Admit It Democrats Are Racists That Play Race Cards — Lying Lunatic Left Losers — Videos —

Story 1bama Spy Scandal: Obama Administration Officials Including National Security Adviser Rice, CIA Director Brennan and United Nations Ambassador Power Spied On American People and Trump Campaign By Massive Unmasking Using Intelligence Community For Political Purposes — An Abuse of Power and Felonies Under U.S. Law — Videos

Story 1: Trump Targets Transgender Troops — No More Gender Reassignment Surgeries In Military and Veterans Hospital — Cuts Spending By Millions Per Year — What is Next? — No More Free Viagra — Tranny Boys/Girls No More — Videos —

Story 2: Senate Fails To Pass Senator Rand Paul’s Total Repeal Amendment — Tea Party Revival Calling For Primary Challenge Against Rollover Republican Senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Dick Heller of Nevada, John McCain of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — All Republicans in Name Only — Really Big Government Democrats — Videos —

Story 3: Trump Rally in Ohio — Neither A Rally Nor A Movement Is Not A Political Party That Votes in Congress — New Viable and Winning American Independence Party Is What Is Needed –Videos

Story 1: Pence Breaks Tie — Senate Will Debate How To Proceed With Obamacare Repeal and Replace — Videos —

Story 2: Congress Overwhelming Passes New Sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea — Long Overdue — Videos —

Story 3: Trump Again Critical Of Attorney General Sessions Apparently For Not Prosecuting Leakers and Going After Clinton Foundation Crimes — What about Obama Administration’s Spying On Trump — An Abuse of Power Using Intelligence Community for Political Purposes — Will Trump Dump Sessions? If He Does Trump Will Start To Lose His Supporters in Talk Radio and Voter Base — Direct Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein To Fire Mueller — If He Won’t Fire Him — Fire Both Mueller and Rosenstein — Punish Your Enemies and Reward Your Friends President Trump! — “In Your Guts You Know He is Nuts” — Videos

Story 1: The American People Do Not Care About Phony Russian/Trump Collusion Conspiracy of The Lying Lunatic Left, Delusional Democrats and Big Lie Media — They’re Coming To Take You Away To The Funny Farm To Play with Your Ding-a-Ling — Videos —

Story 2: Trump Should Read Saul Alinski Rules For Radicals To Understand What Is Going On — Then Have Department of Justice Investigate The Clinton Charitable Foundation For Public Corruption and Obama Administration For Abuse of Power Using Intelligence Community for Political Purposes And Then Fire Mueller For Conflicts of Interests — The Sooner The Better — Go On Offense Stop Playing Defense — Just Do It! — Videos

Story 1: “Obamacare Failed” Says President Trump — Wants Obamacare Completely Repealed and Replaced Sooner or Later — Obama Lied To American People — Does President Trump Understand The Relationship Between Pre-existing Conditions, Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating and Adverse Selection — Many Doubt Trump Really Understands The Relationship That Is The Real Reason Obamacare Was Designed To Fail From The Beginning So It Could Be Replaced By Single Payer Government Health Care — Videos

Story 1: Will Trump Challenge The Washington Establishment To Achieve His Promises? You Betcha. Will He Win? Long Shot –A Movement Is Not A Viable Political Party That Can Beat The Democratic Party and Republican Party and Their Allies In The Big Government Bureaucracies, Big Lie Media and The Owner Donor Class — Votes Count — Independence Party???– Videos —

Story 2: Replace Republicans With D and F Conservative Review Grades and Scores Root and Branch With Real Conservatives, Classical Liberals and Libertarians Until New Political Party Is Formed and Becomes A Viable Party — Videos

Story 1: Senate Revised Republican Repeal and Replacement Bill A Betrayal of Voters Who Gave Republicans Control of Senate and House — Does Not Repeal All Obamacare Mandates, Regulations and Taxes but Does Bailout Insurance Industry and States Who Extended Medicaid Benefits — Trump Should Veto This Betrayal By Republican Establishment of Republican Voters — Videos —

Story 2: Estimated insolvency date of Social Security’s Trust fund is 2034 — and Medicare’s Hospital Trust Fund is 2029 — Social Security and Medicare Benefits Will Be Cut or Taxes Raised or Combination of Benefit Cuts and Tax Increases — Videos —

Story 3: Trump’s Broken Promises and Kept Promises — Good Intentions are Not Enough — Only Results Count — Videos

Story 1: Putin’s Sting — How Russian Intelligence Service (FSB) Played The Washington Political Elitist Establishment (Democrats and Republicans) And Big Lie Media And How They Fell Hook, Line and Sinker for Russian Intelligence Disinformation Campaign — Russian Trump Dossier — The Dangers of Opposition Research, Confirmation Bias, True Believers, Useful Idiots, Blind Ambition and Two Party Tyranny — The Sting Redux — Videos —

Story 2: Republican Sellout The Republican Voter Base By Not Repealing Obamacare Completely — Leaves Many Obamacare Regulations, Subsidies, and Taxes In Place –Republican Replacement of Obamacare Is A Big Bailout Bill of Insurance Industry — The Stupid Republican Party About To Commit Political Suicide — Rest In Peace — Videos

Story 1: Much Ado About Nothing — What Dirt Did The Russians Have On Hillary Clinton? — Donald Trump Jr. Wanted To Know — Smells Like A Russian Setup and/or Democrat Dirty Trick — Who Leaked The Emails To New York Times? — American People Ignoring Paranoid Progressive Propaganda of Big Lie Media — Still Waiting For Any Evidence of Trump/Russian/Putin Collusion — Clinton Collusion Conspiracy Crashing — Desperate Delusional Democrat Deniers of Reality — Videos —

Story 2: When Will Attorney General Sessions Appoint A Special Counsel To Investigate Intelligence Community Leaks and Hillary Clinton Mishandling of Classified Documents and Related Pay for Play Public Corruption of Clinton Foundation? — Was Democratic Hired Opposition Research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steel Formerly of British Intelligent MI-6 Agent A Cutout For The Russian Disinformation Campaign Included in The Donald Trump — Russia Dossier? — Videos

Rand Paul: McCain ‘past his prime,’ maybe ‘unhinged’

Pence: Time For Allies To Pay Fair Share For NATO

Other NATO members need to pay their fair share?

Trump complains at NATO countries for not paying defense share

Congressman Ron Paul, MD – We’ve Been NeoConned

Steve Bannon Lays Out His AMAZING Political Philosophy

Published on Nov 18, 2016

Speech by Stephen K. Bannon (Steve Bannon), Donald Trump’s senior strategic advisor and architect of his winning 2016 election. In this speech delivered to the Liberty Restoration Foundation, Bannon layed out the poliitical philosophy both he and Trump embrace, and which appealed to the American people in the election. It is conservative, perhaps explaining why the political liberal left has resorted to evidently incorrect allegations of antisemitism or racism to try to derail his appointment. Bannon was a Hollywood producer who invested in the Seinfeld comedy TV series, and later became the chair of the Brietbart News Service, expanding it into one of the leading news sources nationally, as an alternative to liberal media outlets that previously dominated US media. He joined the Trump campaign in June 2016, leading him to victory and the White House. Do you think that Bannon is racist, as the democrats have alleged?

Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities: The Consequences of Excessive Government Spending

Uploaded on May 10, 2010

Huge budget deficits and record levels of national debt are getting a lot of attention, but this video explains that unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs are Americas real red-ink challenge. More important, this CF&P mini-documentary reveals that deficits and debt are symptoms of the real problem of an excessive burden of government spending. http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

Michelle Lee, a fact checker with the Washington Post, just posted a long and, to my mind, highly political column. Her column, read carefully, undermines Presidential candidate Ben Carson’s absolutely correct claim, made in announcing his candidacy, that the true measure of U.S. fiscal debt is not the $13 trillion our government reports as its debt. Instead, our true debt is over $200 trillion. Obviously, most of this true debt has been kept off the books by our politicians.

In this column, I’m going to defend Dr. Carson’s statement. But I want to point out that I don’t know Dr. Carson. I have never spoken with him. And I don’t yet know enough about Dr. Carson’s positions to have a view about his overall suitability for President. I am, however, impressed that out of the gate he is talking about the right measure of our nation’s fiscal condition.

I spoke at length to Michelle Lee prior to her writing her column. She told me she was a fact checker. But when fact checking turns into disguised political commentary, there’s a problem. Fact checkers are supposed to check the facts with experts. When it comes to economics, the experts are PhD economists, not political organizations or people, without real economics training, parading as economists, both of which she quotes in undermining Dr. Carson’s credibility.

Now let me turn to the substance. In referring to $211 trillion in unfunded mandates, Dr. Carson was referencing my calculation of the U.S. fiscal gap. As I explained in a NY Times op ed, the U.S. fiscal gap is $210 trillion. So Dr. Carson was off by $1 trillion – by less than one half of one percent.

The fiscal gap is the present value of all projected future expenditures less the present value of all projected future taxes. The fiscal gap is calculated over the infinite horizon. But since future expenditures and taxes far off in the future are being discounted, their contribution to the fiscal gap is smaller the farther out one goes. The $210 trillion figure is based on the Congressional Budget Office’s July 2014 Alternative Fiscal Scenario projections, which I extended beyond their 75-year horizon.

Dr. Carson referenced $211 trillion as the size of “unfunded mandates.” Michelle Lee correctly points out that Dr. Carson was referencing the U.S. fiscal gap, not the present value of mandatory spending. What she knew (because I told her), but failed to say, is that the present value of mandatory spending is far larger than $210 trillion because the fiscal gap is a net, not a gross number.

Michelle Lee is not a PhD economist. Nor is Bruce Barlett, whose truly absurd statement about the debt being an asset she quotes. Yes, it’s an asset, but it’s an asset that young and future generations must pay off. Social Security benefits are also an asset to their recipients, but again, they must be paid off by people who aren’t getting the benefits.

Michelle Lee apparently takes Bruce Bartell’s views more seriously than the views of 17 Nobel Laureates in economics and over 1200 PhD economists from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, Penn, and lesser known universities and colleges around the country. Each of these economists has endorsed The Inform Act, a bi-partisan bill that requires the CBO, GAO, and OMB to do infinite horizon fiscal gap accounting on a routine and ongoing basis.

Introductory Notes

In keeping with the practice of the Congressional Budget Office and other federal agencies that deal with budget policy, many of the federal debt, spending, and revenue figures in this research are expressed as a portion of gross domestic product (GDP). This is because debates about the size of government and the effects of its debt are frequently centered upon how much of a nation’s economy is consumed by government. This measure also accounts for population growth, some of the effects of inflation, and the relative capacity of government to service its debt.

However, the federal government does not have the entire U.S. economy at its disposal to service federal debt. The private sector, which produces the goods and services that comprise most of the economy, utilizes some of these resources, and local and state governments also consume some of the nation’s GDP. Hence, this research sometimes expresses federal debt as a portion of annual federal revenues. This is a more direct measure of the federal government’s capacity to service its debt.

In keeping with Just Facts’ Standards of Credibility, all graphs in this research show the full range of available data, and all facts are cited based upon availability and relevance, not to slant results by singling out specific years that are different from others.

Click here for a video that summarizes some of the key facts in this research.

Quantifying the National Debt

* As of March 1, 2017, the official debt of the United States government is $19.9 trillion ($19,920,418,771,289).[1] This amounts to:

* Publicly traded companies are legally required to account for “explicit” and “implicit” future obligations such as employee pensions and retirement benefits.[7][8][9] The federal budget, which is the “government’s primary financial planning and control tool,” is not bound by this rule.[10][11]

* At the close of the federal government’s 2016 fiscal year (September 30, 2016), the federal government had roughly:

$8.5 trillion ($8,542,000,000,000) in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held national debt, such as federal employee retirement benefits, accounts payable, and environmental/disposal liabilities.[12]

$29.0 trillion ($29,038,000,000,000) in obligations for current Social Security participants above and beyond projected revenues from their payroll and benefit taxes, certain transfers from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury, and assets of the Social Security trust fund.[13][14]

$32.9 trillion ($32,900,000,000,000) in obligations for current Medicare participants above and beyond projected revenues from their payroll taxes, benefit taxes, premium payments, and assets of the Medicare trust fund.[15][16]

* The figures above are determined in a manner that approximates how publicly traded companies are required to calculate their liabilities and obligations.[17][18][19] The obligations for Social Security and Medicare represent how much money must be immediately placed in interest-bearing investments to cover the projected shortfalls between dedicated revenues and expenditures for all current participants in these programs (both taxpayers and beneficiaries).[20][21][22]

* Combining the figures above with the national debt and subtracting the value of federal assets, the federal government had about $84.3 trillion ($84,306,000,000,000) in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations at the close of its 2016 fiscal year.[23]

* This $84.3 trillion shortfall is 93% of the combined net worth of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, including all assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and consumer durable goods such as automobiles and furniture.[24][25]

* These figures do not account for the future costs implied by any current policies except those of the Social Security and Medicare programs.[30]

* These figures are based upon current federal law and “a wide range of complex assumptions” made by federal agencies.[31] Regarding this:

The Board of Social Security Trustees has stated that “significant uncertainty” surrounds the “best estimates” of future circumstances.”[32]

The Board of Medicare Trustees has stated that the program’s financial projections “are highly uncertain, especially when looking out more than several decades.”

The Board of Medicare Trustees has stated that the program’s long-term costs may be “substantially higher” than projected under current law. This is because current law includes the effects of the Affordable Care Act, which will cut Medicare prices for “many” healthcare services to “less than half of their level” under prior law. Per the Trustees:

Absent an unprecedented change in health care delivery systems and payment mechanisms, the prices paid by Medicare for health services will fall increasingly short of the costs of providing these services. … Before such an outcome would occur, lawmakers would likely intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result.[33]

Causes of the National Debt

Spending and Taxes

† To measure the entirety of government expenditures and receipts, “total” instead of “current” figures are preferable, but such data (shown in the next graph) only extends back to 1960.[34]

Spending Distribution

† Social programs include income security, healthcare, education, housing, and recreation.

‡ National defense includes military spending and veterans’ benefits.

§ General government and debt service includes the executive & legislative branches, tax collection, financial management, and interest payments.

# Economic affairs includes transportation, general economic & labor affairs, agriculture, natural resources, energy, and space. (This excludes spending for infrastructure projects such as new highways, which is not accounted for in this graph.[38])

£ Public order and safety includes police, fire, law courts, prisons, and immigration enforcement.

increased “probability of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would be forced to pay much more to borrow money.”[50][51]

* In 2012, the Journal of Economic Perspectives published a paper about the economic consequences of government debt. Using 2,000+ data points on national debt and economic growth in 20 advanced economies (such as the United States, France, and Japan) from 1800–2009, the authors found that countries with national debts above 90% of GDP averaged 34% less real annual economic growth than when their debts were below 90% of GDP.[52]

* The United States exceeded a debt/GDP level of 90% in the second quarter of 2010.[53]

* Per the textbook Microeconomics for Today:

GDP per capita provides a general index of a country’s standard of living. Countries with low GDP per capita and slow growth in GDP per capita are less able to satisfy basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, education, and health.[54]

* In 2013, the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, published a working paper about the economic consequences of government debt. Using data on national debt and economic growth in 20 advanced economies from 1946-2009, the authors found that countries with national debts over 90% of GDP averaged:

31% less real annual economic growth than countries with debts from 60% to 90% of GDP,

29% less real annual economic growth than countries with debts from 30% to 60% of GDP,

and 48% less real annual economic growth than countries with debts from 0% to 30% of GDP.[55]

* The authors of the above-cited papers have engaged in a heated dispute about the results of their respective papers and the effects of government debt on economic growth. Facts about these issues can be found in the Just Facts Daily article, “Do large national debts harm economies?”

Politics

Responsibility

* The U.S. Constitution vests Congress with the powers to tax, spend, and pay the debts of the federal government. Legislation to carry out these functions must either be:

passed by majorities in both houses of Congress and approved by the President; or

passed by majorities in both houses of Congress, vetoed by the President, and then passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress; or

passed by majorities in both houses of Congress and left unaddressed by the President for ten days.[56]

* Other factors impacting the national debt include but are not limited to legislation passed by previous congresses and presidents,[57] economic cycles, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, demographics, and the actions of U.S. citizens and foreign governments.[58]

Current Policies

* In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected the debt that the U.S. government would accumulate under current federal policies.[59] The projection used the following assumptions:

Unemployment will incrementally decline from 6.8% in 2014 to 5.8% in 2018 and 5.3% in 2027, where it will remain thereafter.[60] (For reference, the average of the previous 40 years is 6.5%.[61])

GDP growth will incrementally decline from an average rate of 3.4% above the rate of inflation in 2015 to 1.9% in 2021 and remain constant thereafter.[62] (The average of the previous 40 years is 2.9%.[63])

Federal revenues (i.e., taxes) will incrementally increase from 17.4% of GDP in 2014 to 18.0% in 2024 and remain constant thereafter.[64] (The average of the previous 40 years is 17.4%.[65])

Federal spending will incrementally increase from 20.4% of GDP in 2014 to 23.6% in 2025 and 31.8% in 2040.[66] (The average of the previous 40 years is 20.5%.[67])

Payments for Medicare services will undergo scheduled reductions that would likely cause “severe problems with beneficiary access to care.”[68][69]

* Combining these projections with historical data yields the following results:

† To measure the entirety of the national debt, it would be preferable to show “gross” debt instead of “publicly held” debt, but this data is not presented in this report. Nonetheless, it would make little difference because the excluded debt primarily resides in federal government trust funds that dwindle and become insolvent during the projection period.[71] Facts regarding why and how the federal government keeps its books in this manner are covered in the section of this research entitled “Government Accounting.”

punish younger generations of Americans, because most of the burden would fall on them.

reward older generations of Americans, because “they would partly or entirely avoid the policy changes needed to stabilize the debt.”

“substantially increase the size of the policy adjustments needed to put the budget on a sustainable course.”[73][74]

* The following Ph.D. economists and political scientists have claimed that the level of national debt during World War II is a good reason to not be overly concerned about the modern national debt:

Paul Davidson, editor of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics and author of The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity:[75]

Rather than bankrupting the nation, this large growth in the national debt [during World War II] promoted a prosperous economy. By 1946, the average American household was living much better economically than in the prewar days. Moreover, the children of that Depression–World War II generation were not burdened by having to pay off what then was considered a huge national debt. Instead, for the next quarter century, the economy continued on a path of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity….[76]

Conservatives are also wrong when they argue that deficit spending and a large national debt will inevitably undermine economic growth. To see why, we need to simply look back at times when we have run up large deficits and increased the national debt. The best example is World War II when the national debt soared to 120% of GDP—nearly twice the size of today’s debt. This spending not only got us out of the Great Depression but set the stage for a prolonged period of sustained economic growth in the 50s and 60s.[78]

Right now, federal debt is about 50% of GDP. So even if we do run these deficits, federal debt as a share of GDP will be substantially less than it was at the end of World War II.

Again, the debt outlook is bad. But we’re not looking at something inconceivable, impossible to deal with; we’re looking at debt levels that a number of advanced countries, the U.S. included, have had in the past, and dealt with.[80]

* In the 40 years that followed the end of World War II (1946–1985):

federal spending as a percent of GDP averaged 42% lower than the last year of the war.[81]

publicly held debt as a percent of GDP decreased by 72 percentage points.[82]

* In 2010, around the time when the statements above were written, the Congressional Budget Office projected that under current policy and a sustained economic recovery over the next 40 years:

federal spending as a percent of GDP will average over 78% higher than in the four decades that followed World War II.[83]

publicly held debt as a percent of GDP will rise by 277 percentage points.[84]

Alternative Policies

* As alternatives to the CBO’s current policy projections detailed above, the CBO also ran projections for scenarios such as these:

Federal revenues will incrementally increase from 17.6% of GDP in 2014 to 18.0% in 2020, 19.9% in 2044, and 23.5% in 2084.[86][87] At this point, federal revenues (i.e., taxes) will be 35% higher than the average of the previous 40 years.[88]

Federal spending on all government functions will incrementally increase from 20.4% of GDP in 2014 to 21.5% in 2020, and 26.0% in 2040.[89] At this point, spending will be 27% higher than the average of the previous 40 years.[90]

Payments for Medicare services will undergo reductions that will likely cause “severe problems with beneficiary access to care.”[91][92]

Starting in 2024, Medicare beneficiaries will have a choice to enroll in private plans paid for by Medicare or remain in the traditional Medicare program.[94] Also starting in 2024, the eligibility age for Medicare benefits will incrementally rise to correspond with Social Security’s retirement age.[95] Compared to the projections under the current policy scenario, Medicare spending will be 0.5% lower in 2016, 2% lower in 2020, and 4% lower in 2024.[96]

Federal Medicaid spending will be converted to an “allotment that each state could tailor to meet its needs, indexed for inflation and population growth.”[97] The expansion of Medicaid manadated by the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) will be repealed.[98] Compared to the projections under the current policy scenario, Medicaid spending will be 9% lower in 2016, 19% lower in 2020, and 24% lower in 2024.[99]

All federal spending related to Obamacare’s exchange subsidies will be repealed.[100]

Spending on all government functions except for interest payments on the national debt will incrementally decline from 18.9% of GDP in 2015 to 16% in 2025 before increasing to 16.4% in 2035.[101] (The average of the previous 40 years is 18.3%).[102]

Revenues will increase from 18.2% of GDP in 2015 to 18.4% in 2025, 19% in 2032 and stay constant thereafter.[103] (The average of the previous 40 years is 17.4%.[104])

* Combining historical data on the national debt with CBO’s projections for current policy, current law, and the Ryan plan yields the following results:

Public Opinion

* A poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal in February 2011 found that:

80% of Americans are concerned “a great deal” or “quite a bit” about federal budget deficits and the national debt.

if the deficit cannot be eliminated by cutting wasteful spending, 35% of Americans prefer to cut important programs while 33% prefer to raise taxes.

22% think cuts in Social Security spending will be needed to “significantly reduce the federal budget deficit,” 49% do not, and 29% have no opinion or are not sure.

18% think cuts in Medicare spending will be needed to “significantly reduce the federal budget deficit,” 54% do not, and 28% have no opinion or are not sure.[107]

* Other than interest on the national debt, most of the long-term growth in federal spending (as a percent of GDP) under the CBO’s current policy and current law scenarios stems from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) subsidies.[108]

* A poll conducted in November 2010 by the Associated Press and CNBC found that:

85% of Americans are worried that the national debt “will harm future generations.”

56% think “the shortfalls will spark a major economic crisis in the coming decade.”

when asked to choose between two options to balance the budget, 59% prefer to cut unspecified government services, while 30% prefer to raise unspecified taxes.[109]

* A poll conducted in July 2005 by the Associated Press and Ipsos found that:

Congresses

* During the first session of the 113th Congress (January–December 2013), U.S. Representatives and Senators introduced 168 bills that would have reduced spending and 828 bills that would have raised spending.[111]

* The table below quantifies the costs and savings of these bills by political party. This data is provided by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation:

Presidents

* In February 2001, Republican President George W. Bush stated:

Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt, repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.[115]

* From the time that Congress enacted Bush’s first major economic proposal (June 7, 2001[116]) until the time that he left office (January 20, 2009), the national debt rose from 53% of GDP to 74%, or an average of 2.7 percentage points per year.[117]

* During eight years in office, President Bush vetoed 12 bills, four of which were overridden by Congress and thus enacted without his approval.[118] These bills were projected by the Congressional Budget Office to increase the deficit by $26 billion during 2008–2022.[119]

* In February 2009, Democratic President Barack Obama stated:

I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay—and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.[120]

* From the time that Congress enacted Obama’s first major economic proposal (February 17, 2009[121]) until September 30, 2016, the national debt rose from 74% of GDP to 105%, or an average of 4.0 percentage points per year.[122]

* As of November 4, 2016, President Obama has vetoed twelve bills, one of which has been overridden by Congress and thus enacted without his approval.[123] This bill is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to “have no significant effect on the federal budget.”[124]

Government Accounting

Trust Funds and the Two Main Categories of Debt

* Some federal programs (such as Social Security) have “trust funds” that are legally separated from the rest of the federal government.[125]

* When these programs spend less than the federal government allocates to them, their surpluses are loaned to the federal government. This creates a legal obligation for the federal government to pay money and interest to these programs, thus adding to the national debt.[126][127][128][129][130]

* The federal government divides the national debt into two main categories:[131][132]

Money that it owes to federal entities such as the Social Security program.

Money that it owes to non-federal entities such as individuals, corporations, local governments, and foreign governments.[133] Also, money owed to the Federal Reserve is classified under this category, even though the Federal Reserve is a federal entity.[134][135]

NOTE: Just Facts has identified numerous instances in which politicians and journalists have used terms that technically refer to the overall national debt, when in fact, they are only referring to a portion of it. In order to clear up some of the confusion this has created, below are common terms for the national debt categorized by their proper meanings:

* The federal law that governs the repayment of the national debt draws no distinction between the debt owed to federal and non-federal entities. Both must be repaid with interest.[143]

* The White House Office,[144][145] Congressional Budget Office,[146] and other federal agencies[147] sometimes exclude the debt owed to federal entities in their reckonings of the national debt because this portion of the debt “represents internal transactions of the government and thus has no effect on credit markets.”

* Federal programs to which this money is owed, such as Social Security and Medicare, include this money and the interest it generates in their assets and financial projections.[148][149][150]

* In the 2000 presidential race, the Gore-Liebermann campaign released a 192-page economic plan that contains over 150 uses of the word “debt.” In none of these instances does the plan mention or account for any of the debt owed to federal entities.[151] The same plan includes the debt owed to federal entities in the assets of the Social Security and Medicare programs.[152]

“Deficits” and “Surpluses”

* During the federal government’s 2010 fiscal year (October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010[153]), the national debt rose from $12.0 trillion to $13.6 trillion, thus increasing by $1.6 trillion.[154]

* The White House,[155]USA Today,[156] Reuters,[157] and other government and media entities reported that the 2010 federal “deficit” was $1.3 trillion.

* The difference between the national debt increase of $1.6 trillion and the reported deficit of $1.3 trillion is attributable to the following accounting practices:

When calculating the reported deficit, the federal government merges the finances of all federal programs into what is called the “unified budget.” Hence, the deficit does not account for the intergovernmental debt that arises when programs such as Social Security loan their surpluses to the federal government.[158]

When the federal government lays out money for programs such as TARP and student loans, the outgo is not fully counted in the deficit. The deficit reflects only what the government expects to lose or gain on these loans.[159][160]

* PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project of the Tampa Bay Times to “help you find the truth in politics,”[161] has stated that there were “several years of budget surpluses” during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This same article cites the rise in “national debt” during the tenure of George W. Bush.[162]

* Using the same criterion PolitiFact applied to Bush’s presidency (change in gross national debt), the national debt rose every year of Clinton’s presidency:

Year

National Debt on Inauguration Date†

(billions)

1993

$4,188

1994

$4,501

1995

$4,797

1996

$4,988

1997

$5,310

1998

$5,496

1999

$5,624

2000

$5,706

2001

$5,728

† NOTE: PolitiFact used the inauguration date for its debt baseline.

The national debt also rose every fiscal year of Clinton’s presidency.

Debt Owed to Foreign Entities

* Per the White House Office of Management and Budget (2016):

During most of American history, the Federal debt was held almost entirely by individuals and institutions within the United States. In the late 1960s, foreign holdings were just over $10 billion, less than 5 percent of the total Federal debt held by the public. Foreign holdings began to grow significantly starting in the 1970s and now represent almost half of outstanding [publicly held] debt.[168]

* Ownership of U.S. government debt by foreign creditors as of August 31, 2016:

* Foreign purchases of U.S. government debt increase the demand for this debt, thus putting downward pressure on U.S. interest rates. Conversely, foreign sales of U.S. government debt place upward pressure on U.S. interest rates.[170][171]

* Per a 2008 Congressional Research Service report, a “potentially serious short-term problem would emerge if China decided to suddenly” sell its holding of U.S. government debt. Possible effects could include:

“a more general financial reaction (or panic), in which all foreigners responded by reducing their holdings of U.S. assets”;

The likelihood that China would suddenly reduce its holdings of U.S. securities is questionable because it is unlikely that doing so would be in China’s economic interests. First, a large sell-off of China’s U.S. holdings could diminish the value of these securities in international markets…. Second, such a move would diminish U.S. demand for Chinese imports…. A sharp reduction of U.S. imports from China could have a significant impact on China’s economy….[173]

* During a visit to China in February 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

By continuing to support American Treasury instruments [i.e., buy U.S. government debt] the Chinese are recognizing our interconnection. … We have to incur more debt. It would not be in China’s interest if we were unable to get our economy moving again. … The U.S. needs the investment in Treasury bonds to shore up its economy to continue to buy Chinese products.[174]

* In August 2007 during a currency dispute between the U.S. and China, two leading officials of Chinese Communist Party bodies suggested that China use the threat of selling U.S. debt as a “bargaining chip.”[175]

* In February 2009 during a dispute over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a Chinese general made the following statements in the state-run magazine Outlook Weekly:

Our retaliation should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counterpunches covering politics, military affairs, diplomacy and economics to treat both the symptoms and root cause of this disease. … [W]e could sanction them using economic means, such as dumping some U.S. government bonds.[176]

* One month later while appearing before China’s parliament, the head of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange said:

the U.S. Treasury market is important to us. … This is purely market-driven investment behavior. I would hope not to see this matter politicized.[177]

“Budget Deal to Cut $38 Billion Averts Shutdown”; “Republicans were able to force significant spending concessions from Democrats….” – New York Times[181]

* None of these articles reported that this figure of $38 billion in cuts was primarily relative to a portion of the budget called “discretionary non-emergency appropriations.”[182] Relative to the entire federal budget, this cut left a projected spending increase of $135 billion from 2010 to 2011. This equates to an inflation-adjusted increase of $49 billion or 0.1 percentage points of GDP:[183]

* None of the articles quoted above contains a budget-wide frame of reference for the cuts. A spending reduction of $38 billion equates to 1.0% of the estimated 2011 budget or 2.7% of the projected deficit:

Bush Tax Cuts

Now, please understand that the Bush tax cuts are the single largest part of the black hole that is the federal budget deficit.[186]

* In 2010, the Bush tax cuts lowered federal revenues by about $283 billion.[187][188] This was equivalent to 8% of the federal budget or 22% of the deficit.[189]

* Per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “Most parameters of the tax code are not indexed for real income growth, and some are not indexed for inflation.” Thus, if tax cuts are not periodically implemented, average federal tax rates “increase in the long run.”[190]

* In 2000, the year before the first Bush tax cuts were passed,[191] the federal government collected revenues equal to 20.4% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), the highest level in the history of the United States.[192] Over the previous 30 years, federal revenues averaged 18.3% of GDP.[193]

* In 2000, the stock market “dot.com” bubble burst,[194] the NASDAQ lost 39% of its value,[195] and profits for nonfinancial corporations fell by 18%.[196] In the first quarter of 2001, the nation’s GDP contracted and a recession began.[197][198]

* In June 2001 and May 2003, Congress passed and President Bush signed laws that implemented various tax cuts.[199][200]

* After the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented, federal revenues were 17.8% of GDP in 2005, 18.5% in 2006, and 18.6% in 2007.[201] Average federal revenues for the 30 years preceding the Bush tax cuts were 18.4%.[202]

* The Great Recession began in December 2007,[203] and federal revenues declined to 17.7% of GDP in 2008.[204]

* In February 2009, Congress passed and President Obama signed a law that implemented various tax cuts.[205]

* Federal revenues declined to 15.7% of GDP in 2009 and 16.4% in 2010.[206]

* Federal spending rose from 21.0% of GDP in 2007 to 26.5% in 2010.[207] Average federal spending for the 30 years preceding the Great Recession was 21.8%.[208]

The “Do Nothing” Plan

* In April 2011, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post posted a graph of spending and revenue projections based upon CBO’s “current law” scenario and wrote that it:

shows what happens if we do … nothing. The answer, as you can see, is that the budget comes roughly into balance.[209]

* Klein’s graph and commentary omitted the interest and outcome of the national debt under this plan.[210] In the “do nothing” scenario, outlays were projected to exceed revenues every year through 2084, and the publicly held debt was projected to increase from 62% of GDP in 2010, to 74% in 2030, 90% in 2050, and 113% in 2084.[211]

* In the same commentary, Klein wrote that the “current law” scenario is “a pretty good plan” that contains:

a balanced mix of revenues, through returning tax rates to Clinton-era levels and implementing the taxes in the Affordable Care Act, and program cuts … in Medicare….[212]

* Under this scenario:

Certain elements of the tax code are not indexed for inflation or wage growth. Consequently, taxpayers are shifted over time into higher tax brackets.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 revenues “reach higher levels relative to the size of the economy than ever recorded in the nation’s history.”

Revenues as a portion of GDP continue climbing through 2084, rising 69% higher than the average of the past 40 years and 47% higher than ever recorded in the history of the United States.[213][214]

As a portion of GDP, federal spending without interest on the national debt rises by 2084 to 68% higher than the average of the past 40 years.[215]

Context

* Without mentioning the role of Congress in taxes, spending, or the national debt,[216][217] PolitiFact (in the same article cited above) wrote that the national debt increased by $5.73 trillion “under” George W. Bush whereas there were budget surpluses “at the end of the Clinton administration.”[218]

* Below are the fluctuations in national debt organized by the tenures of recent presidents and congressional majorities:

* Other factors impacting the national debt include but are not limited to: legislation passed by previous congresses and presidents,[220] economic cycles, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, demographics, and the actions of U.S. citizens and foreign governments.[221]

David Halberstam, 1934-2007

David Halberstam on Covering War in the Vietnam War

David Halberstam Talks About Vietnam

Published on May 16, 2012

David Halberstam begins his career in 1955 as a reporter with the West Point, Miss., Daily Times Leader. By 1962, he’s reporting for The New York Times in Vietnam. Halberstam wins a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1964. Among the books he authors are “The Best and the Brightest” (1972) and “The Powers That Be” (1979).

Vietnam War and the Presidency: Keynote Speaker

Published on Apr 23, 2014

David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, gives the opening lecture at “Vietnam and the Presidency”, a national conference where leading historians, key policymakers of the Vietnam War era, and journalists who covered the war examine the antecedents of the war, presidential decision-making, media coverage, public opinion, lessons learned and the influence of the Vietnam experience on subsequent US foreign policy.

The Vietnam War was the longest and most controversial war that the United States ever fought. It claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and over three million Vietnamese. From the arrival of the first US military advisors in the 1950s to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, US involvement in Viet Nam was central to the Cold War foreign policies of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. The war has continued to affect the policies of subsequent presidents, and its legacy is particularly relevant today during America’s war on terror.

David Halberstam – America Then and Now – 04/27/06

Published on Feb 12, 2014

David Halberstam is a legendary figure in American journalism. A graduate of Harvard University, he joined The New York Times in 1960 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War. His landmark trilogy of books on power in America, The Best and the Brightest, The Powers that Be, and The Reckoning, received wide critical acclaim. He is the author of fourteen bestselling books, including The Next Century, where he explores the American agenda for the 21st century; The Fifties, which examines the decade he considers seminal in shaping America today; and War in a Time of Peace, which recounts the impact of Vietnam on current U.S. foreign policy.

Conversations with History: Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets – Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

“Terminate With Extreme Prejudice” Daniel Ellsberg Talks About CIA Plot To Assassinate Him

Conversations with History: Neil Sheehan

The Early Years of the Vietnam War: Young War Correspondents (1996)

Published on Dec 4, 2014

Cornelius Mahoney “Neil” Sheehan (born October 27, 1936) is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a U.S. Supreme Court case when the United States government attempted to halt publication.

He received a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his 1988 book A Bright Shining Lie, about the life of Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann and the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and raised on a farm nearby, Sheehan graduated from Mount Hermon School (later Northfield Mount Hermon) and Harvard University with a B.A. in 1958. He served in the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1962, when he was assigned to Korea, and then transferred to Tokyo, where he did work moonlighting in the Tokyo bureau of United Press International (UPI). After his stint in the army he spent two years covering the war in Vietnam as UPI’s Saigon bureau chief. Sheehan relied heavily for information on Phạm Xuân Ẩn, who was later revealed to be a North Vietnamese agent. In 1963, during the Buddhist crisis, he and David Halberstam debunked the claim by the Ngô Đình Diệm regime that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam regular forces had perpetrated the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids, which U.S. authorities initially accepted. They showed instead that the raiders were Special Forces loyal to Diệm’s brother, Nhu, and motivated to frame the army generals. In 1964 he joined The New York Times and worked the city desk for a while before returning to the Far East, first to Indonesia and then to spend another year in Vietnam.

Has any war since had such an impact on the public psyche? Why was the reaction to the carnage in Vietnam so strong? Was it because of a lack of conviction in the cause the US was fighting for? Or was it because of these reporters and photographers and their work that so poignantly captured the brutality of war?

Jon Swain was the only British journalist in Phnom Penh when it fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. His coverage of these events and their aftermath won him the British Press Award for Journalist of the Year. His story was retold in the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields and his bestselling book River of Time. Swain wrote an article about covering Vietnam in his early 20s in the most recent issue of Frontline: A Broadsheet.

French war photographer Patrick Chauvel was only 18 when he started covering the Vietnam war. In the years that followed he has covered over 20 wars and in 1995 won the World Press Photo award for Spot News. He is the author of two books in French, Rapporteur de Guerre and Sky.

John Laurence, author of the prize-winning memoir The Cat from Hue, covered the war for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and made the multi-award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company. He also covered 15 other wars in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

This special event will be moderated by Michael Nicholson OBE, former senior foreign correspondent for ITN. Nicholson reported for over 25 years from 15 conflicts, including Vietnam. The film Welcome to Sarajevo and his book Natasha’s Story were both based on his experiences covering the war in Bosnia.

The Best and the Brightest Who Advised Presidents: Shaping Modern Liberalism (1999)

vietnam war documentary [full documentary]

‘Vietnam in HD’: The Truth About the Vietnam War Told by the People Who Fought It past 2

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “The Fear and the Dream” Part 1

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “The Fear and the Dream” Part 2

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Let’s Play House”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “A Burning Desire”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “The Beat”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “THE RAGE WITHIN”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “The Road to the Sixties”

David Halberstam on the Global Economy and Middle Class Existence

David Halberstam on the Economic Fears of Americans

Author David Halberstam on the U.S. Deficit

Notebook: David Halberstam (CBS News)

C Span: Orville Schell on the death of David Halberstam

David Halberstam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the author and journalist. For the radio sports announcer and executive, see David J. Halberstam.

Vietnam

Halberstam arrived in Vietnam in the middle of 1962, to be a full-time Vietnam reporter for The New York Times.[6] Halberstam, like many other US journalists covering Vietnam, relied heavily for information on Phạm Xuân Ẩn, who was later revealed to be a secret North Vietnamese agent.[7]

In the mid-1960s, Halberstam covered the Civil Rights Movement for The New York Times. He was sent on assignment to Poland, where he soon became ‘an attraction from behind the Iron Curtain’ to the artistic boheme in Warsaw. The result of that fascination was a 12-year marriage to one of the most popular young actresses of that time, Elżbieta Czyżewska, on June 13, 1965.

Initially well received by the communist regime, two years later he was expelled from the country as persona non grata for publishing an article in The New York Times, criticizing the Polish government. Czyżewska followed him, becoming an outcast herself; that decision disrupted her career in the country where she was a big star, adored by millions. In the spring of 1967, Halberstam travelled with Martin Luther King Jr. from New York City to Cleveland and then to Berkeley, California for a Harper’s article, “The Second Coming of Martin Luther King”. While at the Times, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era.

In 1980 his brother, cardiologistMichael J. Halberstam, was murdered during a burglary.[9] His only public comment related to his brother’s murder came when he and Michael’s widow castigated Life magazine, then published monthly, for paying Michael’s killer $9,000 to pose in jail for color photographs that appeared on inside pages of the February 1981 edition of Life.[10]

In 1991, Halberstam wrote The Next Century, in which he argued that, after the end of the Cold War, the United States was likely to fall behind economically to other countries such as Japan and Germany.[11]

In particular, Halberstam depicted the 1949 Yankees and Boston Red Sox as symbols of a nobler era, when blue-collar athletes modestly strove to succeed and enter the middle class, rather than making millions and defying their owners and talking back to the press. In 1997, Halberstam received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

After publishing four books in the 1960s, including the novel The Noblest Roman, The Making of a Quagmire, and The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, he wrote three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s, including his 1999 The Children which chronicled the 1959–1962 Nashville Student Movement. He wrote four more books in the 2000s and was working on at least two others at the time of his death.

Death

After Halberstam’s death, the book project was taken over by Frank Gifford, who played for the losing New York Giants in the 1958 game, and was titled The Glory Game, published by HarperCollins in October 2008 with an introduction dedicated to David Halberstam.[13]

Mentor to other authors

Halberstam was generous with his time and advice to other authors. To cite just one instance, author Howard Bryant in the Acknowledgments section of Juicing the Game, his 2005 book about steroids in baseball, said of Halberstam’s assistance: “He provided me with a succinct road map and the proper mind-set.” Bryant went on to quote Halberstam on how to tackle a controversial non-fiction subject: “Think about three or four moments that you believe to be the most important during your time frame. Then think about what the leadership did about it. It doesn’t have to be complicated. What happened, and what did the leaders do about it? That’s your book.”[citation needed]

Pulitzer Prize-winning Korean War correspondent Marguerite Higgins was the staunchest pro-Diệm journalist in the Saigon press corps, frequently clashing with her younger male colleagues such as Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and Halberstam. She claimed they had ulterior motives, saying “reporters here would like to see us lose the war to prove they’re right.”[14]

Conservative military and diplomatic historian Mark Moyar[15] claimed that Halberstam, along with fellow Vietnam journalists Neil Sheehan and Stanley Karnow helped to bring about the 1963 South Vietnamese coup against President Diệm by sending negative information on Diệm to the U.S. government in news articles and in private, all because they decided Diệm was unhelpful in the war effort. Moyar claims that much of this information was false or misleading.[16] Sheehan, Karnow, and Halberstam all won Pulitzer Prizes for their work on the war.[citation needed]

Newspaper opinion editorMichael Young says Halberstam saw Vietnam as a moralistic tragedy, with America’s pride deterministically bringing about its downfall. Young writes that Halberstam reduced everything to human will, turning his subjects into agents of broader historical forces and coming off like a Hollywood movie with a fated and formulaic climax.[17]

Murray Rothbard Gives a Tribute to Ludwig von Mises

Speaking of Liberty

Mises said that teaching the public was just as important as addressing scholars — maybe more so.That is what Lew Rockwell specializes in: history and theory and analysis in defense of the free society, written in clear prose to reach a broad audience. Rockwell’s new book is as pro-liberty as it is brutally critical of government. It is relentlessly forthright yet hopeful about the prospects for liberty. It is rigorous enough to withstand the enemy’s closest scrutiny, and chock full of the energy and enthusiasm that will keep you reading.

As a collection of speeches delivered over a period of ten years, Speaking of Libertyis long (470 pages), but it is the kind of book people will want to see in the hands of friends, family, and students. The book begins with economics, and explains why Austrian economics matters, how the Federal Reserve brings on the business cycle, why we need private property and free enterprise, the unrecognized glories of the capitalist economy, and why the gold standard is still the best monetary system. The remaining sections deal with war, Mises and his work, other important thinkers in the libertarian tradition, and the culture and morality of liberty.

The book is united by a set of fixed principles: the corruption of politics, the universality and immutability of the ideas of freedom, the centrality of sound money and free enterprise, the moral imperative of peace and trade, the importance of hope and tenacity in the struggle for liberty, and the need for everyone to join the intellectual fight. We all have searched for the book we could give to friends and neighbors, business associates and family members, to explain why we believe in the cause of liberty. Speaking of Liberty is that book.

“Critics of the free market are therefore the Wile E. Coyotes of our day: sitting on the stool in comfort, they systematically saw away at the legs beneath them, on the absurd assumption that they will be able to hang in the air indefinitely after their work is done. Along comes Lew Rockwell and shouts as loud as he can: ‘Beep, beep.'” Gary North

Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

[Delivered at a memorial service at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, January 20, 1995.]

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was just one man with a typewriter, but he inspired a worldwide renewal in the scholarship of liberty.

”Give me a short description of his thought and contributions,” said the reporter when this free-market giant died at the age of 68. But how do you sum up Beethoven’s music or Dante’s poetry?

In 45 years of teaching and writing, Rothbard produced 25 books, thousands of articles, and three generations of students. He was a teacher who never stopped learning, an intellectual prize fighter who always punched cleanly. He battled every destructive trend in this century—socialism, statism, relativism, and scientism—and awakened a passion for freedom in thousands of scholars, journalists, and activists. At once a genius and a gentleman, his causes were honesty in scholarship, truth in history, principle in politics, and—first and foremost—human liberty itself.

Filled with laughter and principled beyond measure, Rothbard rejected the compromises and pretensions of the modern world. He was unaffected by intellectual fashion, undeterred by attacks, and untempted by opportunism. Quite simply, nothing stopped him. And as the Happy Warrior of economics, as Forbes called him, he made singular contributions to banking history, price theory, monopoly and antitrust, and business cycles, to name just a few areas.

For many years, he taught economics at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, working in a dingy, windowless office on the fifth floor, surrounded by Marxists. He never once complained, except to wonder why an engineering school couldn’t make the elevator work. His admirers celebrated his appointment as the S.J. Hall distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Teaching in New York, Las Vegas, Auburn, and at conferences around the world, Rothbard led the renaissance of the Austrian School of economics. He galvanized an academic and popular fight for liberty and property, against the omnipotent State and its court intellectuals.

Like his beloved teacher Mises, Rothbard wrote for the public as well as professionals. “Civilization and human existence are at stake, and to preserve and expand it, high theory and scholarship, though important, are not enough,” he wrote in 1993. “Especially in an age of galloping statism, the classical liberal, the advocate of the free market, has an obligation to carry the struggle to all levels of society.”

Rothbard’s theory was his practice. He was involved in nearly every political and social development of his time, from Robert Taft’s presidential campaign to the 1994 elections. His last article, appearing in the Washington Post, warned that Newt Gingrich is more likely to betray the revolution than lead it.

The Mises Institute is honored that Rothbard headed our academic programs for 13 years. He spoke at all our conferences and teaching seminars, edited our Review of Austrian Economics, consulted on our books and monographs, and wrote for our Free Market. Most of all, he taught and inspired our students, who will carry his ideas into the future.

Rothbard has been compared to the greatest minds in social science, but his wisdom and character led him to show gratitude to his predecessors. His formative intellectual event was the 1949 publication of Mises’s Human Action.

“I had gone through all the doctoral courses at Columbia University,” Rothbard wrote, “without once discovering that there was such a thing as an Austrian School, let alone that Ludwig von Mises was its foremost living champion.” But this book “solved all the problems and inconsistencies that I had sensed in economic theory.”

Rothbard attended Mises’s seminar at New York University from its first meeting, and became the student who would defend and extend Mises’s ideas, push the Austrian School tradition to new heights, and integrate it with political theory. He taught the movement how to write, and was also an important cultural influence.

The Austrian School had previously been a largely European intellectual movement. Mises changed that with his migration to this country. Rothbard completed this process, so that the locus of the school is no longer Europe, but America, the nation whose founding principles Rothbard and Mises so deeply admired.

Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard’s great work, was the key to the resurgence of Austrian economics after Mises’s death. Beginning with the philosophical foundation, Rothbard built an edifice of economic theory and an unassailable case for the market. In many ways, the book rescued economics from its mostly deserved reputation. Instead of the dismal, statist, and incomprehensible pseudoscience students are used to, Rothbard gave us a tightly reasoned, sweeping case for the free market that is still used in classrooms all over the world.

The book treated economics as a humane science, not as a branch of physics. Every page took account of the uncertainty of economic conditions, the certainty of change, and the central place of the entrepreneur, while never losing sight of the implacability of economic law. No wonder Henry Hazlitt, writing in National Review, called it “brilliant and original and profound.”

Since its publication, the treatise has only grown in stature. Through it, Rothbard has taught countless students to think like real economists instead of number crunchers. He explained and applied the logic of human action in economic exchange, and refuted its opponents. Like Mises, he looked not at “economic man,” but acting man who deals with the scarcity of time and resources.

Rothbard breathed life into economic theory with his historical works, and refuted the charge that Austrians are only concerned with high theory. He was also one of the few intellectuals on the Right to champion revisionist history. Other historians have since picked up his works and built on them to create entire schools of thought.

He wrote America’s Great Depression, applying the Misesian theory of the business cycle to refute the most common anticapitalist slander: that the market caused the crash and economic downturn of the 1930s. He showed that the villain was government intervention, in the form of credit expansion and Herbert Hoover’s high wage policies. Paul Johnson adopted the thesis for his Modern Times. He also refuted the then-dominant view of Herbert Hoover as a laissez-faire conservative, by showing that he was actually a premature New Dealer. In journal articles, he showed that the New Deal followed logically from the economic regimentation of World War I and the Progressive Era, which gave us central banking and the income tax.

Rothbard was once asked to write a short book of American history. He agreed, and it eventually appeared. But Conceived in Liberty was four large volumes on the period 1620–1780. His purpose was to highlight forgotten events that demonstrate the libertarian character of our history and people. It is masterful, revisionist, and a pleasure to read. But what happened to the original project? Rothbard explained that he had discovered so much (tax revolts! uprisings! betrayals! power grabs!) that was left out of conventional accounts.

The American revolution threw off tyranny, he argued. It was not simply a continuation of British-style statism in another guise, as Hamilton claimed. The new social order would protect communities, properties, and essential rights. Rothbard also proved to be as proficient a military historian as he was an interpreter of ideological history.

Rothbard hardly let a moment go to waste, teaching through the day and writing through the night. His wife of 41 years, JoAnn, tells of being awakened once by his newest discovery: “That bastard Eli Whitney didn’t invent the cotton gin after all!”

In his work, as in his life, he always sided with the pro-liberty forces against the welfare-warfare State. He especially liked the anti-New Dealers, the anti-imperialists, the Confederates, the anti-federalists, the tax resisters, the underground businessmen, the anti-State pamphleteers, and other unsung heroes. Throughout history the power elite has found profitable uses for the State. Rothbard never passed up a chance to name them, to explain how they did it, and to show how their actions harmed everyone else in society.

Conflict was the central theme of Rothbardian political economy: the State vs. voluntary associations, and the struggle over the ownership and control of property. He showed that property must be in private hands and owners must be free to control it as they see fit. The only logical alternative is the total State. There is no room for a “third-way” like social democracy, the mixed economy, or “good government,” and the attempt to create it is always disruptive.

Power and Market, another enduring contribution, zeroed in on this conflict, and attacked every form of government intervention, confounding one antimarket cliché after another, and defending market competition as essential to social peace. Where others looked for “market failure,” Rothbard found only government flops.

The book discussed the most common intervention in the market: taxation, the direct taking of someone’s property by a group claiming a monopoly on coercion, i.e., the State. The taxing power defines the State in the same way that theft defines a robber.

He also showed that there can be no neutral tax, that is, one that leaves the market exactly as it would be without the tax. All taxes distort. And all taxes are taxes on production and hinder it, even so-called consumption taxes.

Taxation takes capital from private hands and prevents it from being used to serve private interests and the consuming public. This is true regardless of the type of tax. Also, the government spends taxes in ways that alter the production patterns of the market. If money is spent on market-oriented projects, it unjustly competes; if it is spent on nonmarket projects, it is economically inefficient.

Taxes are never “contributions,” he argued. “Precisely because taxation is compulsory there is no way to assure—as is done automatically on the free market—that the amount any person contributes is what he would otherwise be willing to pay.” As Rothbard said, it is not utopian to work for a society without taxation; it is utopian to think that the power to tax won’t be abused once it is granted.

No principle of taxation, he argued, can equal a market system of fairness. A progressive tax discriminates on the basis of income; the rich aren’t forced to pay more for bread than the poor. A flat tax forces the same result, since higher incomes contribute a greater dollar amount than lower ones. The least harmful tax is a head tax or equal tax: a flat fee low enough for even the poorest to pay.

As a steadfast believer in free trade, Rothbard argued that peace between nations cannot rest on negotiations between State managers. Peace is kept by the network of exchange that develops between private parties. This is why he opposed false “free trade” such as Nafta and Gatt, which have more in common with neomercantilism, and he was the first to forecast the disaster Nafta has become.

Interventionists have long used the language of markets to advance statism. Consider antitrust law enforced in the name of “competition.” Rothbard showed that the only authentic monopolies are those created by law: the government subsidizes a producer at others’ expense (public hospitals and schools) or forbids competition altogether (the postal service).

Other forms of monopoly include licensure, that is, deliberately restricting the supply of labor or number of firms in a certain industry. Government monopolies always deliver inferior service at exorbitant prices. And they are “triangular interventions,” because they subsidize one party while preventing others from exchanging as they would in a free market.

He showed that unemployment insurance (actually, unemployment subsidies) increases the number of people out of work. Child labor laws, a favorite of unions and the Department of Labor, subsidize adult employment while preventing young people from gaining valuable work experience. Even eminent domain (“a license for theft”) fails under Rothbard’s property-rights strictures.

What about “intellectual property rights”? Rothbard defended the copyright as a contract made with consumers not to reprint a work, resell it, or falsely attribute the source. A patent on the other hand, is a government grant of monopoly privilege to the first discoverer of certain types of inventions to get to the government patent office.

And under public ownership, he argued, the “public” owns nothing, and the ruling officialdom owns all. “Any citizen who doubts this,” Rothbard suggested, “may try to appropriate for his own individual use his allotted part of ‘public’ property and then try to argue his case in court.”

The government sector focuses on the short run, he argued; there is no such thing as “public-sector investment.” It is only the private sector, which is the real public sector, Rothbard said, where property owners take long-run considerations into account. Unlike government, they preserve the value of resources, and do not plunder or waste them.

In his last scholarly article, he developed the idea of the nation as something separate from either the State or the individual, a collective identity based on language, ethnicity, race, and religion. Rothbard celebrated the post-Cold War emergence of the nation as a countervailing power to the State, and presented the hope that “the brutal and repressive state will be gradually dissolved into a harmonious and increasingly prosperous social order.” It was the final hope of a lifetime of hopes.

Many economists think numbers are the sum of the discipline. Rothbard turned the tables to argue that government data are gathered and used for piecemeal planning and the destruction of the economy. Whatever information markets need about economic conditions can be garnered privately.

A good example is the “trade deficit” between nations, which he said is no more relevant than the trade deficit between towns. There is no justification for assuming that trade must equal out in accounts. The important point is that people are benefiting from exchange, whether across the street or across the world.

Aren’t historical statistics useful for research? Many are misleading. The Gross Domestic Product counts government spending as production, when it should be counted as consumption. Also, government taxing is considered neutral when it’s destructive. Deficits, which drain savings and crowd out production, also need to be accounted for when assessing productivity.

Rothbard looked at private production by subtracting out the government component. The result is the Private Product Remaining, or PPR, which has served scholars as a basis for more accurate historical work. Using the PPR, for example, we see national product increasing at a much slower rate than the GDP, thanks to big government.

Even money-supply statistics were in need of revision in Rothbard’s view. Long before people gave up on the Fed’s ability to generate anything useful (the “M’s” are laughable these days), Rothbard proposed his own measure based on the Austrian School theory of money. It counts cash, deposits easily turned into cash, and all other liquid financial assets.

The State and its banking cartel is the worst possible money manager, Rothbard argued, and free enterprise is the best. He produced many studies on the abuse of money and banking by central bankers and the central State. They include his doctoral thesis, Panic of 1819, Mystery of Banking, and papers on the banking debates of the mid and late 19th century, the monetary debauchery of FDR, the fiasco of Bretton Woods, and the following age of inflation and monetary chaos. Just out is his Case Against the Fed, the best book ever written on the subject.

View the Federal Reserve as a counterfeiting syndicate, and we have Rothbard’s theory of the central bank. But, he pointed out, at least the counterfeiter doesn’t pretend to be working in the public interest, to be smoothing out business cycles, and to be keeping prices stable. He was also the first to analyze in depth and from a free-market perspective the special-interest groups that created the Fed.

Rothbard added to Austrian theory a systematic model for how money is destroyed. The State conspires with the central bank and the banking industry to enhance their mutual power and wealth by devaluation, the equivalent of coin clipping. Little by little, society’s money has less to do with its original form, and eventually it is transformed into paper created out of thin air, to best serve the State’s interest.

As a part of this process, the State intervenes to forbid customers from insisting on 100-percent reserves in checkable deposits. From there, it is progressively easier to move from gold to paper, as has happened in this country from the turn of the century.

Like Mises, Rothbard saw inflation as a policy pursued by the banking industry in league with the government. Those who get the newly created money first—banks, government, institutional securities traders, and government contractors, for example—win out because they can spend it before prices go up and investments are distorted. Those who get the new money later lose.

A Rothbardian gold standard is no watered-down version. He wanted convertibility at home and abroad. Only that system—which would put depositors in charge of insuring the financial soundness of the banking system—can prevent the Fed’s monetary depredations, which have reduced the value of the 1913 dollar to 5 cents today.

The ultimate guarantor against inflation is a private banking system with private coinage, a great American system that was squeezed out by the central State. Rothbard’s writings on money and banking—extensive and deep—may eventually become the single most influential aspect of his thought.

Economists rarely talk about liberty and private property and even less about what constitutes just ownership. Rothbard did, arguing that property acquired through confiscation, whether by private criminals or the State, is unjustly owned. (He also pointed out that bureaucrats pay no taxes, since their entire salaries are taxes.)

Ethics of Liberty was his moral defense. “Liberty of the individual,” Rothbard wrote, is “not only a great moral good in itself” but “also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes”: virtue, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity, civilization itself. “Out of liberty, stem the glories of civilized life.”

Once we understand why private property should be inviolable, troublesome notions fall by the wayside. There can be no “civil rights” apart from property rights, because the necessary freedom to exclude is abolished. “Voting rights” are also a fiction, which—depending on how they are used—can also diminish freedom. Even the “right to immigrate” is phony: “On whose property does someone else have the right to trample?” he asked.

Thus, the Rothbardian social order is no ACLU free-for-all. The security of property provides lines of authority, restraints on behavior, and guarantees of order. The result is social peace and prosperity. The conflicts we face today, from affirmative action to environmentalism, are the result of false rights being put ahead of private property.

In defense of capitalism, Rothbard was uncompromising. But he did not see the market as the be-all and end-all of the social order. For him, capitalism was not a “system,” but a consequence of the natural order of liberty. Neither “growth” nor “greed” is the capitalist ideal. In the free economy, leisure and charity are goods like any other, to be “purchased” by giving up alternative uses of time and money.

And with growing prosperity the need for material goods falls relative to nonmaterial goods. “Rather than foster ‘material’ values, then, advancing capitalism does just the opposite.” No society has ever been as grasping and greedy as the Soviet Union, although the Left is still trying to convince us that State power equals compassion.

A Rothbardian world would be a world without politics. But Murray was no dropout, and in fact loved politics. Who else could write a 5,000-word essay on a random week of electoral life in New York City, and make every word fascinating?

His political writings date from the early 1950s, when he wrote for Faith and Freedom, a hard-Right, isolationist publication. In articles on the evils of the military buildup, he warned that American liberty would be sacrificed to the Cold War.

That led to his break with the Buckleyites, who ridiculed him and his ideas. They never took him on directly; they were smarter than that. Instead, they smeared him in private, and tried to deny him publishing and speaking opportunities.

As editor of Left and Right and Libertarian Forum, Rothbard also predicted that the Cold War would someday end because Soviet socialism would collapse. But, he said, the American military machine would keep on cranking out the planes and bombs. The real threat, he maintained, was not foreign Communism, but US militarism and socialism, which would do what the Soviets never could: steal our liberty.

Rothbard developed a large and growing audience for such views, and continued with this theme for the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, writing against US military interventions in Panama, the Gulf, Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. As the official Left and Right pushed for a New World Order, Rothbard, exasperated, suggested we save time and just invade the entire globe.

Well, here we are 40 years after Rothbard began his foreign-policy writings. The warfare State is as big as ever, and so is the welfare State. National Review—which has always cozied up to power, and, like other neoconservatives, even holds up the dictators Lincoln and Roosevelt for our admiration—is still cheerleading the Republican establishment to new levels of hypocrisy. And we can see that Rothbard was right all along: right about the military, right about politics, right about the Buckleyite conservatives and their love of State power.

That is why Rothbard has triumphed in the end. Despite its attempt to purge and destroy him, National Review‘s influence on the intellectual world hasn’t come close to Rothbard’s. And when the Buckleyites are long forgotten, Rothbard’s authority will not have begun to peak.

For Rothbard, politics and criminal behavior are largely the same enterprise, to be treated with the same investigative rigor. Every day required another whodunit. His motivation in political writing was exposing crime and denouncing criminals.

Some people say that Rothbard’s politics were all over the map. That is not true. He set the political standard as liberty itself, and worked with anyone who pursued it. At the height of the Vietnam War, for example, when the official Right was countenancing mass murder, he looked to the New Left as a vehicle for stopping this most vicious form of statism.

But as the Cold War ended, Rothbard was overjoyed to reunite with the remnants of the Old Right. After he was in paleoconservative circles only a few months, we began to witness new ideological hybrids springing up: anarcho-Southern agrarianism, anarcho-anti-federalism, anarcho-protectionism, and anarcho-monarchism. Their advocates were his colleagues, and he was their conscience.

Rothbard’s political thought is simple at its core but astounding in its application. He believed that common moral strictures, and standards of evaluation, should apply to the State.

If theft is wrong, it is wrong. The same goes for murder, kidnapping, lying, and fraud. They are as wrong for the State as for everyone else.

“Always and ever,” he wrote, “the government and its rulers and operators have been considered above the general moral law.” It is this that Rothbard’s right-wing “anarchism” was devoted to ending: he wanted to make government subject to the rule of law. But Rothbard was no Utopian; his view was that government power should be limited in any way possible, and he worked to make it so.

His pioneering studies of private courts predated the popularity of private arbiters. (Rothbard wanted to abolish “jury slavery” and force courts to pay a market wage.) His work on private law enforcement predated the popularity of home protection and private security. His promotion of private roads predated their wide use in suburbs and malls. His promotion of private schools predated the anti-public school revolt.

What Rothbard wrote about Mises applies in his case as well:

never would Mises compromise his principles, never would he bow the knee to a quest for respectability or social or political favor. As a scholar, as an economist, and as a person, Ludwig von Mises was a joy and an inspiration, an exemplar for us all.

Like Mises, Rothbard gave up money and fame in academic economics to promote what is true and right. And he set all who knew him an example of how a man should live his life.

The Mises Institute was blessed to be associated with him, and he credited the Institute with having “at last forged an Austrian revival that Mises would be truly proud of.”

Rothbard’s ideas and character, like those of Mises, must be always before us, and before new generations as well. The Mises Institute will ensure that it is so. We are still discovering the breadth and depth of Rothbard’s literary legacy, with the publication of volumes one and two of Rothbard’s history of economic thought, put out by Edward Elgar shortly after his death. It is the most important work of its kind since Joseph Schumpeter’s.

Whereas other texts pretend to be an uninterrupted march toward higher levels of truth, Rothbard illuminated a history of unknown geniuses and lost knowledge, of respected charlatans and honored fallacies.

Later in 1995, a two-volume compilation of his important economic articles, totaling more than 1,000 pages, will appear in Elgar’s “Economists of the 20th Century” series edited by Mark Blaug. In addition, there are unpublished manuscripts, articles, and letters to fill many more volumes.

From Menger to Rothbard, Austrian School economists have argued that man is motivated by much more than mere self-interest and profit maximization. If the neoclassicals emphasize homo economicus, the Austrian School studies homo agens, the person who acts for a wide variety of reasons, including those that have nothing to do with material gain.

Murray N. Rothbard was empirical proof that the Austrian theory is correct. In his professional and personal life, he always put classical virtues ahead of his private interest. His generosity, his constancy, and his faith helped make him not only a giant among scholars, but also a giant among men.

His acts of charity were uncountable. How many times have I seen a student approach him at one or two in the morning at a teaching conference and ask a question about the gold standard, or economics as a purely logical science? He had been asked the same thing a thousand times before, but that student would never know it, as Rothbard enthusiastically explained everything.

Many, myself included, were schooled in economics, politics, philosophy, history, and much more at his feet. If his beneficiaries defaulted on their debts to him, as they so often did, he would shrug it off.

In an age of Limbaughvian self-promotion, Rothbard always pointed beyond himself, and never tired of extolling the greatness of his beloved teacher, Ludwig von Mises.

He never wanted, nor would he have tolerated, a cult of Rothbard. He lived to see the emergence and development of Rothbardian political economy, but he never once acknowledged its existence. Even his demeanor suggested this. Was there ever a genius with so little pretension?

Rothbard took ideas so seriously that he refuted even the most idiotic thoughts from the most irrelevant sources. How few of these people realized that he was paying them the ultimate compliment: treating them as if they were his equals.

Rothbard never sought academic or popular prestige. A first look at his bibliography seems to reveal a prolific genius with little marketing sense. But that was the point: despite his promotion of the free market, Rothbard never let the market determine what he would think or say. He adhered to what is right regardless of self-interest.

Imagine, for example, the courage it took to carry on the American isolationist tradition—almost single-handedly—in a time of hysterical pro-war propaganda.

He could have given up his anti-interventionism in foreign policy and been a big shot in conservatism. He might have been National Review‘s favorite intellectual. Who knows? He might have even made the pages of Commentary. Or he could have given up his free-market and strict private-property views, or at least downplayed them, and been rewarded by the Left. At the height of the Vietnam War, this would have made him a star at the Nation.

Some say that Rothbard’s constancy was a vice, that he refused to change his mind. In fact, no one was more ready for correction. In recent years, to take just one example, he wrote that he had neglected the cultural foundations of liberty, and cheered those who hadn’t.

In a contradictory accusation, others have said that Rothbard’s consistency is a myth, that in his long political life he swung from Right to Left to Right. This is a smear. In moral and cultural matters, he was always a reactionary. In politics, Rothbard’s constancy was based on his belief in the primacy of foreign policy. When a nation becomes an empire, he argued, the prospects for liberty are nil. Look for the opponents of war and imperialism during his life, and there you would find Rothbard.

One final trait of Rothbard’s: he was a man of faith. He believed that there is order in the universe, that natural law is real and intractable, that truth exists and that it can set us free. His faith was the faith of all men who have put ideals ahead of selfish concerns.

If we are to live up to Rothbard’s example, what must we do? Read and research and produce quality scholarship, commit ourselves to promoting liberty and fighting the State, act on our convictions with tireless energy, never sell out, never give in, and never forget that we will win in the end.

We have one other duty. Without him here to object, we can at last tell the truth about the world-historical figure that was Murray N. Rothbard, who now belongs to the ages.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Work for Ron Paul

Rockwell was Ron Paul‘s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982[4][5] and was a consultant to Paul’s 1988 Libertarian Party campaign for President of the United States.[6] He was vice-chair of the exploratory committee for Paul’s run for the 1992 Republican Party nomination for president.[7]

Paleolibertarianism

In 1985, Rockwell was named a contributing editor to Conservative Digest.[9] During the 1990s Rothbard, Rockwell and others described their views as paleolibertarian to emphasize their commitment to cultural conservatism, even as they continued to hold anti-statist beliefs.[10] In a 2007 interview Rockwell revealed he no longer considered himself a “paleolibertarian” and was “happy with the term libertarian.” He explained “the term paleolibertarian became confused because of its association with paleoconservative, so it came to mean some sort of socially conservative libertarian, which wasn’t the point at all….”[11]

LewRockwell.com

Rockwell’s website, LewRockwell.com, formed in 1999, features articles and blog entries by a number of columnists and writers. Its motto is “anti-war, anti-state, pro-market”.[12]There also is a weekly podcast called the Lew Rockwell Show.[13] As of May 2013 LRC was in the top 10,000 websites worldwide.[14] LewRockwell.com publishes a variety of articles opposing war and imperialism, questioning United States participation in World War II, opposing “economic fascism” and supporting Austrian economics and secessionism.[15]

Ron Paul newsletters

Reason magazine reported Rockwell was a founding officer and former Vice President at Ron Paul & Associates[16] which was one of the publishers of a variety of political and investment-oriented newsletters bearing Paul’s name.[17][18]

In January 2008, during Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign, James Kirchick of the New Republic uncovered a collection of Ron Paul newsletters and alleged that they “reveal decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays.”[18][19] For instance, one issue of a newsletter described African-Americans as “animals”,[18] another asserted that 95% of them were criminals,[20] and another approved of the slogan “Sodomy = Death” and said homosexuals suffering from HIV/AIDS “enjoy the pity and attention that comes with being sick”.[18]

Kirchick noted that most of the articles contained no bylines.[18] Numerous sources alleged that Rockwell had ghostwritten the controversial newsletters;[21] Rockwell is listed as “contributing editor” on physical copies of some newsletters[22][23] and listed as sole Editor of the May 1988 “Ron Paul investment Newsletter”.[24]Reason magazine reported that “a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists – including some still close to Paul” had identified Rockwell as the “chief ghostwriter” of the newsletters,[16] as did former Ron Paul Chief of Staff (1981–1985) John W. Robbins.[25]

Rockwell admitted to Kirchick that he was “involved in the promotion” of the newsletters and wrote the subscription letters but denied ghostwriting the articles. He said there were “seven or eight freelancers involved at various stages” of the newsletter’s history and indicated another individual who had “left in unfortunate circumstances”, but whom he did not identify, was in charge of editing and publishing the newsletters.[26] Ron Paul himself repudiated the newsletters’ content and said he was not involved in the daily operations of the newsletters or saw much of their content until years later.[21] In 2011 Paul’s spokesperson Jesse Benton said that Paul had “taken moral responsibility because they appeared under his name and slipped through under his watch”.[27]